


Echoes of Vibrancy

by BoldlyGoingNowhereFast



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, M/M, Star Trek: Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoldlyGoingNowhereFast/pseuds/BoldlyGoingNowhereFast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Endings are not always happy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Vibrancy

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first try at writing for Star Trek. Sure hope it goes well...
> 
> Anyways, don't read this if you have not seen Into Darkness. Alternate ending to Star Trek: Into Darkness

 

 

The substance that had easily resurrected a dead tribble was not nearly enough to bring James Kirk back to the land of the living, and as Spock stared blankly at the vital display in the drab hospital room, this thought and many more circled on a vicious loop in his head. Khan's magical, genetically engineered blood had not lived up to its claims.

  
Jim was breathing, his heart was beating, and lying there under the grey covers he looked as if his eyes would open at any moment, and he would grin up at Spock and ask after the state of his ship. But there was no James T. Kirk in that body, no brightness that had so intrigued Spock- just the mocking shell. A tribble possesses no higher thought, and that was the problem.

  
What could easily resurrect a creature with no more functions than a plant could not bring their Captain back to them. It was illogical to hope for miracles that you knew did not exist. He was given the final proof as he stood rigidly in that horrible hospital room that he had been right.

  
There was nothing but bleakness in Spock’s mind now, and the remains of the sorrow that had colored his rage one short week ago in the deadly race across San Francisco. There was no rage left now: only grief and an echo of Jim’s dying voice in his head, telling Spock that he was scared. That voice begged him, pleaded with him to do something, but Spock had failed as a First Officer and more importantly, as a friend.

  
Doctor McCoy stood up from where he had been adjusting the IV in Jim’s arm and moved to stand beside him. Spock found he now had more in common with the Doctor than he ever had, for a reason that the both of them would do anything to reverse. Spock would give anything to be quarreling with McCoy on the Bridge instead of standing in beside him in companionship, audience to this.

  
“I’m going to give him another day.” McCoy’s voice was raspy from misuse, and there were dark bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep. He had been working tirelessly for the past week, to no avail, and Spock could see that the Doctor was crumbling. It took a great ordeal to make Doctor McCoy waver, and this was destroying him. 

  
“If his brainwaves don’t pick up I’ll have to…” He trailed off, but Spock did not need him to finish the sentence to understand. He’d have to unhook Jim’s body from the life support equipment and let him die. There was no reason to keep a lifeless body on life support, to keep a vibrant man’s motionless body anchored to empty hopes.

  
Spock’s hands clenched into fists by his sides, fingernails digging into his palms. “You know as well as I that he is gone.”

  
McCoy’s head snapped around to face him, eyes narrowing. “You have something better to be doing, huh? Can’t wait a day longer?”

  
Anger made his voice hard. “Do not think for one moment that my reasoning diminishes my care.” He took a deep, anchoring breath and continued before the startled doctor could comment. “There is nothing left of the Jim we knew, and it is a disgrace to his memory to be keeping the shell of him alive. He is no longer with us, Doctor, and we are merely prolonging our suffering.”

  
McCoy looked away from him sharply, his breathing harsh. Neither of them had the energy or the inclination to quarrel any longer. “I know, dammit. I know.” He glanced up at the prone form on the bed silently. “This is killing me.”

Arrangements were made, forms were filled out, and Captain Kirk was declared brain dead. There was no mind, no  _katra_ left in his living form and no reason to keep it that way. The sooner he was released from the limbo the sooner life could carry on. The ties needed to be severed.

Spock had remained faithfully at the hospital throughout the transfusion and the days after, and here he would stay until the end, no matter the cost.

There were very few that knew of the attempt at resurrecting Kirk, and those who did were sworn to secrecy until Jim displayed signs of recovery. Now, with recovery declared impossible, they would be the only ones to ever know. McCoy’s face was a pale, stony mask as he began shutting down the machines, and as the whirring diminished, the room became eerily quiet.

  
Spock moved to stand next to the bed, looking down at the smooth, peaceful face with the golden hair and the blue eyes that he would never see again. He would have reached out to take link their fingers or brush a hand across his forehead, but he feared that the blankness in Jim’s mind would haunt him more than it already did. Perhaps it was best that their last touch had been through the cold glass, a touch that they both had been a part of. At least there was feeling there; here there was only numbness. 

  
James T. Kirk took his last breath, and pain bloomed in Spock’s mind, as red and ancient as the deserts of Vulcan. Logically, Spock had witnessed Jim’s death that day in front of the warp chamber. Logic had left him now, and his eyes burned along with each breath that he took that Jim didn’t. He could stand there no longer, could not remain in that cage. He turned and strode out of the room without a backwards glance, his pace quickening until he made it out of the hospital and into the crisp San Francisco air that burned his lungs just as painfully as the recycled hospital air. The world around him was just as colorless as that hospital room, and it was just as deathly quiet. Spock feared it would remain that way permanently.

  
The agony in his head came with a sort of clarity: with Jim’s death a bond had been severed; the warrior’s bond that was meant to be cherished and celebrated now would be a painful reminder to what had been taken from him. Of how Jim Kirk, his Captain, his destiny, and his T’hy’la, had been taken from him.


End file.
